CFP: Mary Astell: Gender, Reason, Faith (10/5/03; collection)

full name / name of organization:

William Kolbrener

contact email:

kolbrew@ashur.cc.biu.ac.il

The editors of the volume in progress, _Mary Astell: Gender, Reason,Faith_, propose to move the study of Astell to a mature phase, and toaccommodate a variety of disciplinary perspectives so that the broadspan of Astell's work can be understood in its manifold contexts. Theeditors of the volume are soliciting essays not only on Astell'salready canonized works, but on the full range of her political,theological, philosophical, and poetic writings. The volume, however,will not eschew the more traditional scholarly interest in Astell'sconcerns about gender; rather, it aspires to reveal how Astell'sreflections on gender were always mediated through her diverse set ofconvictions. The variety of her commitments, as well as the intricaciesand contradictions of her work, once seen as merely an indication of herdistance from contemporary feminist perspectives, now attests to acorpus which requires attention not merely for its role in thedevelopment of early modern feminism, but also for its interventions onsubjects ranging from political authority to individual agency, frompolitical eros to divine service, from civil war historiography toLockean epistemology. _Mary Astell: Gender, Reason, Faith_ aims tocontinue the project initiated by Ruth Perry: that is, to bestow uponAstell the attention which she deserves--not merely as aproto-feminist, but as a major figure of the early modern period.

500 word abstracts to the editors, William Kolbrener and MichelleMichelson, by October 5 to maryastell_at_hotmail.com; submissions by summer2004.